hurt to say out loud, as though there was a fist around my heart and each sentence made it clench tighter and tighter.
Chris looked at me like she knew I was lying, but thankfully she didn’t call me on it. “You’re really not coming back to Faire?”
“No. I can’t . . .” I couldn’t face Simon in his Captain Blackthorne persona. I couldn’t pretend to be Emma, the wench in love with a pirate. I couldn’t cheer on a chess match or let him kiss my hand with promises in his eyes, especially now that I knew for certain those promises weren’t real. “I can’t,” I said again.
She gave my hand a squeeze. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.”
I tried to keep that in mind all week as I kept myself busy and tried not to think about Simon. He certainly did his part; he didn’t stop by the bookstore once, and my phone was silent when it came to his number. With no more Faire for me and Simon vanishing into thin air, it was like that part of the summer had never happened. I half expected to snap awake at any moment from a fever dream caused by binge-watching Shakespeare adaptations, back in my old apartment in Boston.
Chris was very kind and didn’t bring up the crash and burn of my love life after that first morning, and for the most part I followed along. But something in the back of my mind kept bothering me, and by Thursday morning it wouldn’t let me go. I had to say something.
“Are you still seeing Simon next week?” His name almost hurt to say out loud, but I pushed past it. “To talk about Faire next year?”
“That’s the plan.” Her face was so full of sympathy I had to turn away from her, look down at the armload of books I carried. “Don’t worry. I won’t ask him to drop by the store. I know you can’t avoid him forever in a town this size, but I’m not going to . . .”
“No.” I waved a hand. “That’s fine. I mean, yes, thank you, I can’t . . .” My breath started to shudder, and how long was I going to cry about this? I shoved the emotion down. “That’s not why I was asking.” I put down the books. I was going to shelve them, but multitasking was off the menu today. “Look, when you talk to him, about next year. He needs help.”
Her brow furrowed. “Well, of course he needs help. That’s why I help him plan . . .”
“More than that,” I said. “I know he loves doing this Faire. It’s his highest priority.” Boy, did I ever know that. “But sometimes I think . . . Chris, I think he’s taking on too much. He’s drowning in it.”
“What?” She looked startled for a second, then shook her head. “No, he’s fine. Faire’s his thing. He’s always a little burned out at the end of the summer.”
“Faire isn’t his thing. It was Sean’s thing, and now Simon has to do it.” My heart was pounding hard now. I felt like I was bringing up something I had no right to discuss. Chris had known Simon for years. Decades, even. I’d known him for a handful of months. But all I could see were Simon’s eyes. How tired they’d looked. How trapped. If I truly was the only person who saw it, I needed to say something. “He’s doing it the way Sean did it because he doesn’t know what else to do. And he can’t move on. He’ll keep doing this Faire till he drops, and he’ll be nothing more than Sean’s little brother forever, carrying on what Sean wanted. But he needs to be his own person with his own life.” I ran out of nerve and shrugged. “I don’t know. I could be wrong. You probably know him better than I do. Just . . . could you ask him? Make sure he’s really okay?”
Chris looked at me carefully, and I waited for her to tell me that it was none of my business. I had broken up with Simon; what right did I have to tell her how he felt? But instead she nodded, her face as kind as ever. “Of course. I’ll talk to him, don’t worry.”
“Thanks.” I picked up the books and went back to work, ignoring the tears that had dropped to